Day 24 ~ Mysterious Sea Mist

I awoke at 5.45am for a wee in the bush. I was pleased to see that Uranus was visible, but alas poor Venus wasn’t.

We both got up for the day at 8.30am to discover that a sea mist had rolled in, obliterating the sun and making camp quite chilly and damp. Bernhardt was up and called over “English weather?” So some Germans do have a sense of humour.

Half an hour later we were bathed in glorious sunshine, but a heavy sea mist still hung over the beach.

Jackie made me an omelette and bacon for breakfast. Minutes before she served up, Bernhardt (not his name) called out “Simon, can you help me”. I helped Bernhardt baton down the hatches by tightening all his guy ropes, because he had heard a storm was incoming at the weekend.

After breakfast, I was doing more manual work, when I heard Bernhardt tell Jackie that he was jealous that Jackie and I were always talking. He went on to say that he and his wife rarely speak after 50 years of marriage…..he doesn’t know how lucky he is!!! Since hearing this I have noticed that they don’t appear to talk to each other, other than to ask each other a question which is a bit sad.

Jackie declared that she was cooking steak for dinner and we need more Gaz. We drove out to InterSport, 17 minutes away. Jackie went clothing shopping, whilst I was tasked in hunting down the gas canisters. I searched in vain and delivered the bad news to Jackie.

Jackie was not best pleased and tracked down a shop worker to ask where we might get one. I was still ambling down the aisle behind, when Jackie collared a young man and said, “Do you know where we can buy some gas canisters?” He turned to her bewildered and said “Yes, right behind you”. She was stood right in front of a whole display of camping gas. How embarrassing!! I’m glad it wasn’t me.

The InterSport shop was bigger and better than any we had seen in the UK. Jackie has identified some new walking boots she will buy if she can’t buy them cheaper in the UK. We left the store with our gas canister and two more lightweight towels.

The plan was to go from here straight to the beach. As we approached we we were engulfed in thick sea mist. For comedy value we took a look at the beach and could hardly see the sea, but more astonishingly there were more people on the beach than at any other time over the last week.

We returned to camp which was still bathed in sunshine and had a liquid lunch. Two hours later, we returned to the beach which was even busier than before.

At low tide I ventured out on the exposed flat rocks with the abundance of seabirds. The surrounding sea water was ridiculously clear.

A miserable Dutch couple, about 70 years old have been the only persons in our immediate vicinity on the beach over the last week. It probably has more to do with the fact that Jackie and the Dutch women are the only two regular topless sunbathers. The Dutch couple in recent days have been joined by 2 young girls, presumably their granddaughters.

Today, they arrived about half an hour after us and sat down just 40 yards away from us. We were having an afternoon of Original Soundtrack music from West End Shows. These included Chicago, Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Book of Mormon and Mamma Mia.

During a fairly loud (but not overly) blast of the Time Warp on a still relatively empty beach, we both saw miserable Dutch women tuck her saggy breasts into her swimming costume and march towards us. We knew what was coming, so I turned down the volume, whereupon she did an about turn and returned to her spot. I called after her “Is that alright now?”, but she totally ignored us.

We were both furious with her lack of response and slowly throughout the afternoon we raised the volume and dared her to say anything. I was going to send her packing with just four succinct words “F*** Off Spaniel Ears”. That was if Jackie didn’t get in first. She just ignored us for the remainder of the afternoon.

Her husband clearly didn’t want to get involved or was too embarrassed, so he pretended to be busy entertaining the granddaughters.

I speculated that Spaniel Ears was so grumpy, because the Dutch have never ever produced a single song of note. Think about it.,.. name just one Dutch tune.

Curiosity got the better of me and I googled Dutch songs. To my amazement, I discovered that one of my favourite songs, Radar Love by Golden Earring is actually Dutch. It is THE only Dutch song of note.

We returned to camp gone 6pm. Jackie cooked up steak and salad. Annoyingly the steak was still not up to the standard that I have become accustomed to with Jackie’s culinary skills. Without getting too technical, she struggled to render the fat sufficiently and she couldn’t generate sufficient heat to flash fry the steak tender. Or maybe the French just breed chewy cows!

We had a couple more wines accompanied by a beautiful sunset. We really should have been on the beach to really appreciate it.

In fact we couldn’t even be bothered to hike up to the shower block, so we both had a sunset wee in the field, cleaned our teeth in the washing up bowl and went to bed.

Song of the Day - Radar Love by Ghost Dance (A better version obviously).Read more